sardethfandomcom-20200214-history
Chapter 2: A Big Fish
Ordon Village, Ordonia Province Ilia watched from her high, hidden vantage point as Link stepped out onto his front porch. One might wonder why she was hiding in the brush of the craggy rocks across from his house, rather than just walking up to meet him face to face. That question answered itself pretty quickly. Link greeted the morning of his day off with a yawn as he gnawed at a bit of whatever he'd cobbled together for breakfast. Despite the fact that it was hours past dawn, it was pretty clear that he'd only just woken up, the biggest clue being the torn up leggings and raggedy old shirt he used as nightclothes. He glanced around, and, apparently satisfied that nobody would bother him, he stepped back into his tree house. The next moment, he came back out with a roll of cloth over his shoulder and flipped agilely down to the ground. He was wearing nothing but his loincloth and a tired smile. Ilia took in the magnificent view with a barely-suppressed sigh. Her heart began to skip more quickly in her chest as he lay out the roll of heavy canvas across his peaceful lawn like a picnic blanket and took up station in the middle. To her growing excitement, Link began his private work out with light calisthenics; jogging in place, jumping jacks, and about a minute of shadow-boxing. His body soon gleamed in the bright sun as he warmed up, and Ilia began to chew on her lip as he moved on to his stretches. That was a sight to make any girl melt, and she still couldn't believe her luck to have discovered it at all. Ever since he'd brought them all home on Telma's cart, Link had been quiet and moody to a fault. Certainly he'd made an effort to be friendly and fun, especially with the younglings, but anyone who knew him could tell there was a strain there. It worried Ilia to see her childhood friend troubled so, but no verbal prodding made the slightest headway. That was why, when he'd changed his day off to a shift when everyone else would be sure to have work, Ilia had resolved to find out what he was up to with all that private time. She'd quietly changed her own day off to match his—a move that caught her father's attention in all the wrong ways—and spent most of the first morning picking hand-holds out of the Cliffside near Fado's house. Eventually she'd managed to achieve her hidden vantage point, but what she spied on Link's side of the precipice was like nothing she'd expected or feared. Link used his day off to… well… to work out. You really can't understand just how odd that is until you consider that life on a working farm is more exercise by itself than five days a week with deadweights and barbells. That he spent his day off in an exercise regime—a tougher regime that Ilia herself could have imagined in her worst nightmares—made absolutely no sense. That was what her mind had been saying on the first day, while her eyes and libido went an entirely different direction. She didn't even realize how worked up the sight had gotten her until Link walked off for a douse in the stream. She'd tried to stand up, only to fall flat on her butt immediately. Her legs were too weak to hold her up, and she nearly panicked during the long minutes it took her to manage her first wobbling steps. The cocktail of embarrassment and excitement was too much for her, and she'd spent the rest of the day hiding in her room. At least, for some reason, she spent the rest of the day in her room. All that week, Ilia had been unable to meet Link's eye. Every time she even got near him, all she could think of was what he looked like all sweating and perfect. He didn't hulk or bulge, but his muscles gathered in perfect proportion to his wiry frame, more like an artist's idealized statue than a back country ranch hand. Now that she'd seen him going full-bore, she could tell how much he held back when other people were around, and the difference staggered her. He was a sharpened blade, or maybe a wild and ferocious beast, and yet he put on his tatty old clothes and walked among the rest of them as though he were the same old person. For a whole week, Ilia had floundered in a fog of confusion, not sure what to think, say, or do about what she'd discovered. Then their day off rolled around again, and her feet carried her to her hiding place before she even knew what she was doing. Today made the third time, and the young woman basked in the all-over warm feeling she received just from watching as he once again shed the pretense of normality and worked up to that shining perfection that almost seemed to pour out of his skin with the sweat. Link was larger than life, a dynamo of strength that was blinding and unapproachable, exuding an aura of sub-conscious energy that threatened to burn her from across the field. It was intoxicating, and captivated her such that she never heard the soft footsteps coming up behind her. "There you are Ilia!" the high, sweet voice said, and the teenage girl nearly jumped out of her skin as she was caught red-handed. "I've been looking all over for you! Uncle Jaggle thought he saw you come up this way, and here you are! Your dad wanted me to tell you—" Ilia rolled over and looked up to see Beth, who stopped talking when she noticed the look of abject, terrified guilt on her 'big sister's' face. The look begged only one question, which she asked immediately with a quickly growing smile. "Hey! Just what are you doing up here anyway?" her rising tone made sure Ilia knew she'd realized the girl was up to no good. Before Ilia could leap up and snatch her, Beth dodged around and looked over the cliff. The young girl gasped as her jaw dropped open, and Ilia moved too late to bundle her down into the shrubs before Link caught them both. Beth was speechless in the dirt, and Ilia could hardly blame her. Link had reached his push-up reps. The ritual started slow, with simple push-ups in quick succession as he balanced on the tips of his toes, maximizing the strain on his arms. He quickly moved to working one arm at a time, then did a handstand and worked through the same routine with his body stock-straight in the air above him. When he finished with his one-arm, hand-stand push-ups, he retrieved a medium-sized rock from his yard and did it all over again with it on his back. When he switched to a hand-stand again, he held it between his legs—and that's where Beth came in. The combination of balance and raw strength was enough to take anyone's breath away, and so the barely-budding girl hadn't stood a chance. "Is-is-is that Link?" Beth asked, when she found her voice again. Ilia hissed at her to be quiet as Link collapsed on his sweat-dampened canvas and began his sit-up reps. Ilia didn't blame the girl for wondering, because there was honestly something utterly different about Link when he wasn't holding back. It was almost like he was a different person than he'd been a few months ago; certainly different than he pretended to be to people's faces. "Yeah, yeah it is," and the older girl's face flushed with fresh embarrassment as she couldn't keep the husky breathlessness out of it. She felt like she'd been caught doing something shameful, but it didn't lessen her built-up excitement in the least, and her eyes were still riveted. "A-are you going to tell anyone about this?" Ilia eventually managed to whisper. "Uhhh… huh?" Beth was distracted, almost certainly feeling quite a few sensations that she might well not have known existed before now. At the moment, Link had hefted his weight-stone and was doing his sit-ups with it held above his head as far as he could reach. The way the muscles rippled under his skin was entrancing, and both Ilia's and Beth's heads tilted unconsciously to the side in the same motion sympathetically. "HEY, LINK!" a deep voice bellowed from around the bend leading to the village, and both girls shrieked quietly. Link was startled out of his perfect concentration, and like a snuffer clapping down over a candle, the unbelievable heat and energy he'd been projecting vanished. He was suddenly plain-old Link again, and he was looking around for the intruder. Ilia pressed Beth's head into the tall grass and hunched down herself, neither girl daring to move. Link's Doorstep, Ordon Village, Ordonia Province Link was charged and energized. The urge to exercise, to push his body to the incredible extremes it had become capable of, made no logical sense to him at all. That didn't change the fact that it felt great, just like racing around on Epona and practicing his swordsmanship with the heavily weighted training sword he'd cobbled together. When he did those things, he felt whole and satisfied in a way that a regular day's hard work couldn't begin to approach. "Link?" the voice shouted again, and this time Link recognized it as Rusl's cool, jovial call. "Are you up there, son?" "Yeah, yeah, hello Rusl," Link shouted back down the path as he pried himself off the canvas and padded over to the water barrel he'd left at the foot of his house's ladder. He doused himself with one ladle-full and then drank the next down, and by the time he was done, Rusl was standing at the mouth of the pathway. The older man scratched at his stubble as he looked from the sweat-soaked canvas to Link, who made no pretension to modesty as he stood in the summer heat wearing nothing but his damp loincloth. He must have looked quite a sight, sweat-soaked, muscle's steaming, but he just crossed his arms and leaned back against his ladder. If Rusl had any comment, he kept it to himself. "Well, Link, I'm glad I caught you," Rusl broke the silence and walked up with a smile, carefully avoiding tracking his boots on Link's tarp. Link said nothing, but considered his aging mentor seriously from behind the brown hair damped down over his eyes. Rusl's next words caught in his throat for a moment, but he shook off whatever was bugging him and went ahead with, "How've you been, Link? We haven't had a chance to really get down to talking since… since you brought the children back." "I'm… fine." Link eventually answered. "Good food, honest work, my family all safe at home again… what could possibly be wrong?" That's what Link said, but there was an edge on his tone that even he noticed, and Rusl gave him an extremely knowing smile, as though some suspicion of his had been firmly settled. "Link… oh Link… I think I'd almost forgotten what it was like for me, back when I was your age." Rusl's tone was heavy with memories, and his remembering danced behind his smiling eyes. Link was immediately intrigued, and he raised an eyebrow as he mopped his hair out of his face. "Believe it or not, I know exactly what it's like to come home from running around the wide world and see the old stomping grounds with new eyes. I'm probably the only person in fifty miles who's done half as much traveling as you, you know." "Heh, I guess you got me," Link admitted, when he realized the older man had only half an insight into what was worrying at Link's nerves. He calmed and went with the flow. "Ordon… even all of Ordonia… it's a damn small place." For a breathtaking instant, Link thought Rusl had noticed his concealed capacities. Link had been careful to only fully reveal his more-than-human talents to Zelda, Midna, and the opponents that got between him and whatever needed doing. Only two of those people were alive to tell the tale. He'd shown off to the other ranch hands in a fit of reckless abandon, but even that had been but a shadow. The Link that rushed head-first into monster-infested temples and did battle with towering, blood-thirsty fiends was not something he ever revealed to those around him. Truthfully, he never quite knew where that caution rooted from; it had sort of evolved along with Midna's insistence that no one discover his transformation ability. It seemed like a worthwhile effort though, considering that his powers still half-frightened him, the one who lived with them, and he had no interest in terrifying others or otherwise becoming an object of fear. "Yes, the country life can be pretty dull, once you've had a taste of the big city and felt the measure of the countryside with your own two feet," Rusl went on, his mind miles away. He snapped back to the present suddenly and considered Link more seriously. "I've noticed that you've been slacking off around the farm, and it wasn't hard to put two and two together. This place is boring you to tears, isn't it?" His grin was epic. "Uh…" Link considered that question with more thought than it had asked for, and Rusl gave him an odd look. Link ignored it, and answered only after a long moment. "Really, Rusl, its not that I'm bored. Not at all. Sure, there's nothing glamorous or thrilling about being 'Link the Ranch-hand,' as opposed to 'Link the Wandering Swordsman.' But… glamor isn't what I'm after. I'd be happy to live out the rest of my life right here with you guys. You're my family, and it'd be pretty greedy for me to ask for more from life than what you all can give." "Goodness, Link!" Rusl gave him a wondering look, the rather clumsy words still reaching out to him. Link stopped him from saying more with a gesture as he went on. "That would be enough, except for one thing." Link paused and looked the closest thing he had to a father right in the eye. "I'm not a ranch hand anymore, Rusl. Or at least, I'm not just that. I went out chasing after the kids, and I lent my hand to you and the Committee to Restore Hyrule… and I became something… more." The pleading look in Link's eyes filled the gaps in his fumbling explanation, and Rusl nodded. "I feel like… like I'm letting my abilities go to waste. The village doesn't need me for what I can do, it needs me as a strong back to work a job that leaves most of my skills to flounder. I don't know… it just…" "You don't have to explain it to me, Link," Rusl told him, putting a comforting hand on the younger man's shoulder. "I made the mistake of assuming your restlessness was the same as mine, but that doesn't change the fact that you're not meant to be whiling away your life in a one-horse village like Ordon. Not at your age." "Rusl…!" "No, Link, hear me out on this. I was just like you once: young, brash, better with a sword than most, and determined to take up as much of the world as I could fit in my own two hands. People like you and me don't sit around tending goats. I've known from the first time I looked in your eyes across a sparring circle that you would leave Ordon some day." "Rusl, come on!" Link said, disturbed by the odd tract the older man was rambling off on. "No one's talking about me leaving the village! Where would I even go? What would I do? People here may not need all I can give, but I'm still needed here!" "Link, you need to face the fact that you're a very big fish in a rather small pond," Rusl stated quite flatly. "You're a strong hand to have around, but just look at yourself! You're going out of your mind, cooped up here in the back-ass of nowhere. You should be out in the world, being everything you can possibly be, testing yourself to the farthest limits you can achieve. That's the only way you're ever going to escape this funk you're in." Link was silent for a while, his mentor's words biting deep into his heart and resonating with the repressed feelings there. His frizzled, drying hair crowded around his eyes as he stared at the hard, compassionate man across from him. "I… I think you're probably right," he admitted, "but I can't just leave everyone here in the lurch. The only thing I really want is for Ordon to prosper, for us all to have better lives." "I hear you there, son, and that brings me to my next point," Rusl said, his smile somehow managing to widen. "Don't you think you do more to help as a swordsman, anyway? Not just for Ordon, but for all of Hyrule?" "What?" Now Link was entirely confused, and Rusl chuckled as he pulled something out of his belt-pouch and held it out. "This letter came from an old friend of mine working for the newly reorganized government. You know him too, though I never saw you say much to old Auru. Anyway, I want you to read it, give what he says some hard thought, and then consider what I just said again." He winked at Link and shook his hand. "Anyway, that's all I wanted to talk about. You be sure to put on some more clothes now, son," he advised as he walked away, and chuckled, "Even in weather like this, you can still catch cold if you're not careful." Link looked down at the official-looking letter in his hand, then back at Rusl, who whistled as he stalked back toward the village. What the hell had that been all about? Ordon Village, Ordonia Province Beth watched Rusl turn the bend in the path, and then looked anxiously over at Ilia. The two of them had heard everything. "Ilia… does this mean that Link is going away?" Beth asked, all confusion from earlier suffused under waves of new fear. The thought of losing her coolest big brother all over again was shockingly upsetting. When she got no answer, she took another look at Ilia, and realized that however upsetting the idea was to her, Ilia had her beat, hands down. The older girl was in a sort of deep shock, and Beth left her to it, thoroughly disturbed. Without further hesitation, Beth turned and scrambled back home. Ilia didn't notice Beth leave. As the day wore on, she didn't seem to notice the shadows lengthening. The world might as well not even have been there. Eventually, she stood up and, her expression of breathless fear never budging, she trudged off into the evening air. Link's House, Ordon Village, Ordonia Province After reading Auru's letter, Link sat in thought for a good, long time. In a certain respect, the equation was simple: Hyrule needed him, and he had no choice but to answer the call. At the same time, he realized that there was a choice, and the part of him that eagerly rushed to the proffered challenges was a strangely detached voice in his mind. It nearly screamed at him to pack this instant and ride off into the sunset. A large part of what he considered his true, 'normal' self actually agreed, but the duality he still felt disturbed him deeply. In the past, he clearly hadn't had much choice in his actions. First the children needed him, so he had to break the shadow curse on the land and rescue them. As Midna had explained, simply securing them would never be enough as long as Zant plagued Hyrule. And then Midna had been injured, and Zelda had sacrificed all that she was to empower them to defeat the twilight, and Link could never have lived with himself if he'd allowed her sacrifice to be in vain, or if he'd let Midna's hidden, secret softness be suborned and succumb to Zant's evil. There was no choice at all. To serve those he loved, Link had gone past what he'd thought were his limits. He'd broken every boundary of human ability that might have kept him from his goals, and had been reformed in a crucible of battles against things that a single man had no business facing alone. That was the process that had made him what he was now, whatever the hell that might be. Now he was something else, he could feel the difference as much as others could, when he allowed it to show. But now he also, for the first time, had a choice. In truth, he'd decided to leave weeks ago, deep in his heart. But the way his spirit seemed to split over the question—the foreign breath of uncontrolled eagerness that bloomed at this opportunity—frightened him so much that he had to sit down and examine it for quite a while. In the end, there was nothing to do but start packing. The way his soul cheered the instant the choice was settled upon almost made him stop again, but he shook off that in the interest of time. This growing strangeness was a problem for later, considering that it might simply go away by itself. The process of packing for a journey was a simple one for Link, who by now was an accomplished traveler. Some secret impulse had compelled him to keep a full array of supplies on hand and ready in the first place, one of many clues that spoke of the inevitability of this journey. For everything else, he had merely to step into his basement storage room and kick open one of the many freshly-built chests he'd squeezed into the space. In a way, it was almost a waste as he started to rummage through them. He was emptying them out, and he could still smell the fresh coat of wood finish the cooper had slapped on when Link bought them. After his journey, Link was absolutely certain that, if nothing else, he was no longer the Hero Chosen by the Gods. Evil was defeated, dead and gone. Perhaps to shed the sense of destiny he'd been traveling under for so long, he'd wanted to at least put as much of his 'hero of destiny' equipment to rest as he could manage. It was a cosmetic effort only—no one knew that better than him. But still, he had to do it. The master sword was simply returned to its home, a useful trinket and a fine blade, but nothing that Link had any desire to keep around. The sense of sanctified, righteous power in that blade was enough to make one's hair stand on end, and such hallowed force was not for the ken of mortal men. If evil, true evil, ever again threatened the land while he drew breath, only then would Link even consider disturbing that holy artifact. It was too much a reminder of that supernatural strangeness; the direct divine influence that he'd never really bought into, and would love to forget. After that, things got a bit more complicated. The equipment he'd looted from various temples and holy grounds was of widely varying providence. The hero's bow was returned to the Gorons only with much complaining. 'He was the hero,' they'd argued, it was his by 'divine right.' At length, he'd convinced them to take it back and hold it for some future hero. More mystical items had been somewhat easier. The gale boomerang was mildly sentient, and he'd gotten the impression that it could take care of itself. He'd chucked it, and it had flow off over the horizon on a gentle breeze. The rod of command was as much a religious relic as the master sword, and after long consultation with the Ooccoo peoples, he'd left it secure in the sky city. He'd also offered them their claw shot back, but they'd been quick to point out that they didn't need it to get around, and furthermore, they had no hands to use it. He'd had trouble arguing against that, and hadn't belabored the point. Other than that, there was really no one to return his ill-gotten tools to, much less anyone to protest his keeping them. He'd offered Prince Ralis the zora-scale armor back, and he'd accepted it only after the same protests the Gorons had made. They hadn't wanted the claw shot from the Lake Temple either, and he'd been left with both. The spinner was a true oddity, and after much thought, he decided to leave it at the arbiter grounds with the sages. He'd thought it convenient to do it on the trip out to see off Midna, and he'd nearly forgotten, with how that turned out. Almost as an afterthought, he'd tried to present the Ordon sword to Princess Zelda as Ordonia's gift to the monarchy. She'd laughed right in his face and pressed the blade back into his hands, assuring him that the province had already given Hyrule a much, much greater gift. And then, though he was hardly half-done, he'd been out of options. Everything else he'd bought with his own money or won fair and square, and was wholly and rightfully his. Thus, his basement was like an arsenal from some military fortress, and he'd invested in locks to keep it all away from curious children. More specifically, he'd bought the locks to keep it all away from Talo. By the time he'd finished reminiscing, everything was packed up in saddlebags and belt-pouches. His bomb bags were empty, but that could be easily fixed with money. His quiver was also empty, but it mattered little with no bow to his name—although he'd actually set in motion the fix to that weeks ago, providing another clue that he'd secretly always realized he would be leaving again. His sword and shield were cleaned and ready, something he'd done almost obsessively before sleeping every night out of pure, unshakeable habit from his journey. That left nothing at all, except the clothes. The green armor that had been a gift from the light spirits was a touchy spot for Link, although, as with most of his efforts to leave behind the title of 'Hero Chosen by the Gods,' he couldn't say quite why. Wearing it certainly felt right, but it was also a terrible reminder of his journey, and what he'd lost in that time. At the end of the day, he couldn't quite bear to don it again, but he still packed it. That meant he was unarmored for the time being, but he planned to correct that when he fixed his bow deficiency. And that… was that. He was ready to leave. By cosmic coincidence, Link had just sat down to start writing a letter to Ilia when someone knocked on his door. It was odd for someone to bother knocking—the window was open and even half a yell would carry anywhere in his house. Link set down his grease pencil and walked over to answer the knock, completely forgetting that he was naked from the waist up. It wouldn't have mattered, except that the instant he opened his door, Ilia spilled in and clutched to his chest in base desperation. He nearly fell over in shock, his body going stone-rigid as the little slip of a girl pressed up against him. She had been crying. Ordon Village, Ordonia Province Ilia walked as though in a dream, unconcerned with where her feet were taking her. She was vaguely aware that she was crying. She didn't know exactly why. What she did know, in a sudden revelation, was that she was standing on Link's doorstep. Her heart leaped into her throat, and she hesitated. Then she remembered the words she'd overheard, and she swallowed her fear and knocked loudly in one swift burst of desperation. It took everything she had not to turn and run away the next moment. She survived that terrifying wait mostly by leaning against his door and holding her breath. When the door opened, Ilia wasn't ready ye, by far, and she tripped over the threshold to impact against the immovable barrier of warm strength that was Link. She could have died, but instead, she felt herself melting on to him. He was hard, her face pressed against him was like rubbing against sun-warmed stone, but he made no move to push her away, just as he made no move to accept or return her inadvertent embrace. For a while, they stood in the doorway like that, the rest of the world miles away. Then Link's hands clapped onto her shoulders and he pulled her slightly away so he could look at her face with his shocked eyes. He was gentle, but his grip held the promise of vice-like strength, and though she was only an inch or two shorter than him, she felt as helpless as a child in the shadow of a towering adult. Her shocked, terrified eyes met his for an instant, and then he was peering out into the night to make sure no one saw him usher her inside. When they were safe from prying eyes, Link turned to her with questions jockeying for position in his mind. What finally tumbled out was, "Ilia, what are you doing here so late?" It wasn't much of a question—just by the way he checked for intruding eyes he'd shown that he felt the air of guilt around her. He watched Ilia stand there in his house, shivering and fidgeting like a terrified child, and his face softened. "I—I—" Ilia suddenly forgot how to form words, her mind's eye filling in the deafening aura of energy that Link was so artfully concealing. At length, she forced her eyes to focus on his gentle, inviting expression, and she began to calm down. When he stepped forward and took her small, soft hand into his calloused, steel-muscled paw, she jerked in surprise. The world, blurry from her scattered wits, coalesced again for the first time in hours. "Link!" She gasped, as though she just noticed him, wrapping both of her hands around his and pulling it to her heart in a beseeching gesture, "Please, don't leave!" Link choked, his face twisting up like he'd just been kicked by Epona. He wasted no time going nearly as pale as Ilia had been when she staggered in, and it took him a moment before he could breathe. A few moments more and he finally seemed to gather his disheveled composure. "How—" he began a new question, and realized it was the wrong one. "Ilia… I…" and he had to stop again. The utterly pitiable expression of need on her face had dug into his heart with two serrated talons and was holding on for dear life. He was saved from immediate compliance only with a sudden rally from the same wellspring of hot strength that supported him against giants, dragons, and demons. It was a combat-reflex, an instinctive response to an underhanded surprise-attack, and it made his face crowd up into a steely-eyed mask. "I don't know what you've heard," his voice came out harder than he'd ever have wished upon the girl, "but I am leaving tomorrow. It's something I need to do." "No!" her voice cracked on a sob, the sudden burst of emotion washing off of the wall of his body with no effect. "No, Link! Please, you can't leave us again! You can't leave me! Link, I lov—" Link's hand slipped up and clapped over her mouth like a cast-iron gag, surprising her and sending her into muffled shrieks and struggling. Her hands instantly stopped their trembling grip on his right fist and tried to dislodge his left, but she might as well have tried to pull apart riveted sheets of metal. She twisted and squirmed away from him, and he deftly tripped her over his leg and bundled her up against his chest with his free arm like she was an unruly kitten. She found herself eye-to-neck with him, still gagged by his hand, her heart thundering with mixed terror and excitement as she became intimately aware of the hard, hot expanse of his chest. "Ilia, I know how you feel about me," Link said, and his voice was strangely distant as he almost whispered into the younger girl's ear. "I've known for a while. I was planning to leave you a letter, but I suppose, now that you're here, that it would be cowardly not to say it to your face." Ilia did not like where this was going, and she struggled anew in his unbreakable grip. She fought and fought, but she couldn't break away from him any more than she could shut out his too-calm whisper as he aimed a mortal blow right at her deepest, most secret places. "We… can't ever be together, Ilia." The pain was not the sharp stab she'd expected, but rather, a sort of spreading cold that began in her chest and wormed its way through her veins to her every extremity. It was calming, chilling, but nothing at all like soothing as it slowly chased her struggles away. When she stood still in his arms, Link let her go. She used her freedom to press her face into his hot shoulder and grip him by the belt for support. She wasn't crying, but tears that she imagined would never stop threatened from just behind the veil of cold. "It's that, isn't it?" she said, in the tiniest voice he'd ever heard from her. In a move that had nothing to do with sense or feelings, and everything to do with mind-bending desperation, Ilia resorted to the only gambit she could imagine. With the bravado of the cornered animal, Ilia pressed her breasts flush against his chest and rubbed them against him in the most distracting way she could manage with her shirt and chest bindings still between them. It caught him completely off guard, and as he scrambled to push her away, she took the opportunity to go for broke. One hand darted down the loose binding of his work pants and the other slipped up around his neck so she could pull herself the inch up to his lips. In that moment, Ilia was the first normal person to ever penetrate Link's guard since he'd drawn the master sword and sealed the fate of divine power etched onto his soul. She'd used an attack neither he nor the blazing power germinating inside him knew any defense or counter for. Now if only she'd known what to do from there, her gambit might have had some future. Ilia was not a naive girl by any means. She lived on a farm that bred livestock, and so had a complete understanding of the mechanical aspect of where children came from. But in the realm of seduction, she was a rank amateur, and the fire flowing between their bodies from the connections at her lips and in her hand faded slowly as she found herself at a complete loss. In her half-innocent daydreams, her imagined lovers took command the moment things got past heavy petting, and now she was out of her depth. She began to cry slowly as she pulled away on both fronts and planted her open hands on his chest, forced to use words to say what she could not make her blushing body convey. "If you want me… please… take me…" Ilia whispered as she wept, meaning the words with every fiber of her being. She no longer had any illusion that this would sway him to stay, but that didn't make her want it any less. Her entire body throbbed with a hunger for him that was hot and wet and rubbed around the inside of her skin like velvet-gloved fingers. Even the smell of his bare skin was intoxicating, filling her with a heady rush that promised she'd welcome anything he wanted to do to her. Link growled, actually growled, low and deep in his throat, like he was the biggest dog that had ever walked on two legs. Fear, quick and cold, shot into the girl's spine and mixed with her boiling desire to create a dire cocktail. Before she could make any motion to react, Link snatched her wrists in two vice-strong hands and bore her backwards until he'd pinned her to the wall by her arms, his half-naked body only inches from her. A tremor played through her every recess as an aura of danger began to radiate from Link's every pore, the threat piercing through her lust, even as it somehow magnified her attraction. Her mouth gaped like a fish's as her body arched in a vain struggle to mesh with his, the need for stimulus clouding what shambles of reason she might still possess. It was in that stalemate that Link finally gripped himself with iron bands of self control, shutting down his body's urges one by one with application of discipline he'd originally learned in order to weather the pain of wounds in combat. When he no longer felt like a passenger in his own flesh, he opened his eyes and let his gaze bore in at Ilia. She'd had a chance to calm down herself, and could not lift her sight from the floorboards to save her life. She was blushing so hard it hurt, and it felt like her body would explode from the twin pains racing through her veins. Embarrassment and shame terrorized her, both from the way she'd behaved, and the fact that she'd been so handily spurned. Link's rejection was complete, and the few thoughts she still had were mostly the certainty that she would never be able to look him in the eye again as long as she lived. "Ilia… believe it or not… I care about you. Probably more than you will ever know. I want nothing in this world more than for you… and everyone else in the village to be safe and happy for as long as we all might live." Ilia shivered, her body going numb in self-defense. It was not a cold numb like the first had been, but a tingling that would soon be the utter lack of sensation. The blissful release of a flat swoon lay in that direction, but Link refused to let her go. His words held a hard edge that cut her mind and brought her back from the edge of a faint. "I don't expect you to understand—I barely understand myself—but I'm… not what I used to be before." Link said it like he was revealing the deepest darkest secret of his shamed soul. Ilia realized she already knew what he was talking about, and lifted her head before she remembered to be broken and despondent. "I saw," she said, her words hoarse, "I know." The admission hung in the air for a moment, Link's heartfelt explanation dying on his lips as he recognized her sincerity. "You're… 'bigger than a regular person now. Its… frightening…" and Ilia felt Link's body flinch across the short gap separating them, "… and beautiful. It's beautiful like a wild beast that you can admire and love, but can never cage or keep." As she spoke the words, Ilia realized that, in her heart, she'd understood their truth long before now. She'd known her effort was futile before her unconscious mind had carried her to Link's door. But of course, love wouldn't let her not try. Link laughed. He laughed like he wanted to cry, but there were no tears in him, and he collapsed around Ilia's shoulders, bringing her in to his chest like he was clutching to a lifeline. He'd found someone who understood, someone that saw through to some inkling of what he was facing all on her own, and still chose to speak to him. The only other person who had managed that had fled from him on black wings of twilight, and was gone. Ilia let him laugh onto her shoulder, but she could not but feel hollow inside. "I've… I've been trying so hard, Ilia." He said it like it was essential that she believe it, and she did. She knew her Link, she knew he would try until his very soul bled, but the knowledge brought her no comfort. "But this thing… this power inside of me… its just so…" he struggled for words to quantify sensations that other people would never face, "big. It's big, and it's restless, and it feels trapped. I feel trapped. So much of me doesn't want to go, but you were right to liken it to a beast. I'm afraid… I'm afraid that if I don't escape this feeling of entrapment, I'll gnaw at myself until I've cleaved off everything that holds me here. Until I've got no reason to stay, and no reason to ever comeback." "Link…" Ilia whispered, weeping without hesitation, doubly so as she realized that he could not shed the tears he was feeling. "What happened to you?" The question was heartfelt, and Link considered it in silence as she pressed her ear into his collarbone and listened to his rock-steady pulse. "I got strong…" he said, "I got strong so I could save you, the children, and everyone else. No one ever asked me if I wanted it… but without it… everyone would have…" "Oh, Link," Ilia felt her heart breaking, finally and absolutely. She knew little of his journey, of the horrors he'd faced and the trials he'd overcome to rescue her and everything that made her world bright and happy. But now she knew at least some of the price he'd paid—because he'd sacrificed any future they might have had together. It was a bitter pill to swallow, this cruel divine irony. What caring gods would grant a hero the strength to save a maiden, and then forbid them from happiness together? For some time, the two life-long friends and might-have-been lovers embraced in the hard darkness of Link's humble house. The hot summer day had birthed a humid night, and there was no sound but soft breaths and insects to intrude. It was the kind of moment when you could feel the planet spinning beneath you. "Link… could I ask one thing of you?" Ilia said all at once, not even sure what she was thinking as she spoke it. She felt him nod. "I want to see it." "It?" Link asked, heavy with implication. If the moment had been less utterly grave, it might have been funny, but Ilia wasn't laughing. "That power… that unbelievable, beautiful thing inside of you…" Ilia's voice was distant, like a dreamer's whispers. "I want to see it all. If it's stolen you away from me, I want to know just how deep it goes." "But—" A part of Link quailed at the very thought; he wasn't even sure he'd felt the full measure of that force himself. It could be… chancy. "I need at least this much!" Ilia growled, "Please!" After denying her everything else, he didn't have it in him to try and shield her from this too. Link only hesitated for a moment. "Look me in the eyes," he told her. She nodded, and what had only minutes ago seemed impossible was suddenly as easy as leaning back and opening her eyes. What she saw wasn't the boy she'd grown up with, not really. What was standing in front of her, towering over her psychologically, if not physically, was… a giant. This was not the lost boy Rusl had brought home from one of his patrols to be adopted into the village. It wasn't the taciturn, serious little tough-guy who would rather work his hands bloody than pay a moment's notice to the horse-crazy, pigtailed little whelp she'd been. What it was, without interruption, was the boy who'd stood between her and a pair of wild dogs, driving them off at the cost of nearly-fatal wounds. It was that most integral part of Link, the part that would kick, rage, maul, mangle, and murder anything that threatened what he cared for, only more so. It was that part distilled, magnified once, and then magnified twenty more times, until it filled the room to the rafters with a barely-restrained lethal potential. Looking into two eyes like ice-cold iron daggers, eyes that spoke of feral blood-thirst tempered by only the most fragile restraint, she was transfixed. The blue consumed her, became her world, and it was then that she saw. The vision came unbidden. At first she didn't know what was happening, but then it was so real that she didn't care. In the wells of Link's eyes, Ilia saw the past and future of a man that was as much a concept and ideal as a physical being. A hundred swords over countless thousands of years rose and fell in a cadence of heroism that stretched back into forgotten ages. The hero, the knight, and the guardian stared back at her from an eternal spring of courage. It was a history written in the red ruin of creatures small and gargantuan, of fiends and minions and the damned in never-ending legions, and of loss and sacrifices untold. In that wave of forced insight, Ilia felt her heart balloon in her chest. The love and pride that buoyed her upward was as hot and persistent as the numbness it incinerated was cold and ephemeral. Finally, she set aside her selfish lust to clutch Link to herself alone, and let in the warmth he'd been radiating freely since the moment he'd recognized her at his door. It had always been there, even when he was feral and dangerous, even when he was outwardly cold and distant, and even when she'd made her clumsy bid to snatch a piece of him for herself before he grew too big for her to even dream of approaching. She took that warmth and let it fill her up like he was the sacred spring itself and she was some jar that might hope to contain his magic. The visions never stopped dancing in her eyes, and she accepted them greedily as she strove to retain all she was given. Link, through the grace or curse of the gods, had been gifted and burdened with something great and terrible. It made him huge, such that keeping him in Ordon was like trying to hold the sun in a shoebox. She finally understood why he had to leave, why nothing else would work for any of them. Link's power, restrained as it was, would eventually burst, and would burn up everyone around him in its efforts to reach the wide world where it belonged. But all that was beside the point. The thought that plastered Ilia's face with a drug-addicts smile, as the images of innumerable battles danced in her brain, was that she was loved. Link was a mammoth, an entity that would change the course of nations and generate ripples in history that would be felt for a thousand years. And yet, he loved a tiny little mote of nothing like her as though she actually deserved it. They could never be together—it would be like a moth loving a bonfire. She would burn up in the wake of the actions he couldn't help but take, and fall by the wayside, spent. It didn't matter though, not in the least. It didn't matter, because she was cared for by a giant. In the vision-induced haze, this was more precious by far than all the love of a man giving her a life and a family, which is all she had hoped for before. At length, it was all too much, and Ilia's eyes rolled back in her head as she fainted dead away. Link started to panic, and when the symbol of the triforce traced itself just under each of her eyes in glowing golden lines, he almost dropped her in shock. It was only when a sudden whispering in his gut reassured him that he stopped himself from going prematurely ballistic. 'She got too close to a fire,' he realized spontaneously, 'and she was marked by the heat.' Link's world, which had been surreal, simple, and straightforward during that almost religious experience that had begun with Ilia's arrival, suddenly transformed into the complicated mess it had been since his compass in this world of power had abandoned him for her home in the twilight. A thousand things raced through his mind, not the least of which was that it was well past dark and Ilia was unconscious in his arms. How would that look? In the end, Link sucked it up and dismissed his anxieties with the same reservoir of unfazed courage that let him fly in the face of man-eating, gargantuan monstrosities. It simply occurred to him that if he wasn't intimidated by people who wanted to cut him open and feed on his guts, suck out his soul, or grind his bones to make their bread, fearing the love-tempered ire of people who genuinely cared for him was frankly silly. He hefted Ilia into his arms like she weighed less than nothing and carried her back to her house without even bothering to put his shirt on. Miraculously, and almost certainly only because he really didn't care what happened, no one saw him as he bundled her home. He was tapping on Mayor Bo's door with his boot before anyone was the wiser to his suspicious burden. "Who's there?" the Mayor shouted, gruff and annoyed. Clearly it wasn't Ilia, who wouldn't knock on her own door, and he expected no callers at this hour. Link considered shouting back, but couldn't think of what to say. Before he could resolve his indecision, the door swung open. Bo looked out at the scene outside his door, and his old, run-down heart nearly jolted to a final stop. He choked on his surprise, and only managed to recover as he stumbled backward. Something about seeing the strapping form of Link stripped to the waist with his darling little wildflower perched effortlessly in his arms like a blushing bride brought to mind half-remembered nightmares. They were nightmares about his little pumpkin growing up and away, about getting old and useless and being replaced, all embodied by a scene of abject happiness. Then he saw the solemn look on Link's face, and the particularly limp set to his little girl, and he panicked in a whole different direction. "What's wrong?" he asked, terrified, accusatory, and pleading all at the same time. He dashed up and made to snatch his world away from Link, only for the younger man to barge past him and set her down on the mayor's own hammock. "Nothing, she's fine, Sir." Mayor Bo was Sir, as he always had been, and probably would still have been if Link had wed Ilia and sired the man's grandchildren. He respected the Mayor fiercely; from the moment he'd given a job to an orphan stranger with pointed Hylian ears and saved Link from starving in the unfeeling world. "We were talking at my place, and she just passed out. She doesn't seem ill though. I decided I should bring her home to rest." The evasive explanation had just enough truth that it slipped by the shrewd old man in his moment of anxiety. What Link couldn't figure out was why he hadn't asked about the symbols on her face yet. Even when he leaned over her to caress her hair in a gesture of fatherly tenderness, he still didn't make any comment. The marks were large and glowing with a bright golden sheen, it wasn't exactly something you could mistake for a bit of jovial face-painting. Link's guts started talking again, and it occurred to him that he was the only one who could see the mark. After everything he'd been through, glowing symbols that others couldn't see made perfect sense. "Mayor, there's something else I need to talk with you about," Link said, deciding to get this over with too, as long as he was here. The Mayor looked up and around like he'd totally forgotten about the younger man. "I'm planning to leave the village." "What?" the Mayor wasn't in the frame of mind to even process that statement, and he floundered for a while as Link waited patiently. "Oh. Well." The Mayor looked thoughtful for a while longer, and then nodded. "To be honest, my boy, I've known this moment was coming for quite a while. I figured I was blessed to have a wonder like you around for as long as I could keep you." He was far more accommodating that Link had expected, and they struck up a conversation now that it was clear Ilia was calm and stable in her sleep. They spoke of many things, including the care of Link's house, the foaling season, new families moving in around the region, and Mayor Bo's iron boots. He flatly refused to accept them back. "I figure I could leave as early as tomorrow," Link offered, as a way to close out the conversation. "So soon?" asked the Mayor. "Well, at least make sure to say goodbye to everyone before you leave. There isn't a soul around who won't be sorry to see you go, Link." Link wasn't so sure of that himself. He looked over at Ilia's sleeping form, wondering what she had taken away from that final boon he'd granted to her. Certainly she'd looked pleased by whatever she saw in the depths of his eyes, deep down where that power of his resided, but he just didn't know. For all he could say for certain, she never wanted to see him again, and that thought hurt him in a way that being cut by a sword never could. And hell, even though his intuition refused to let him worry about the marks on her face, he didn't have a freaking clue what that was all about. He nodded to the Mayor and went home, the world on his mind. He had goodbyes to plan. Category:Zelda Category:The Golden Power Category:The Golden Power Book One